This is the year to shatter the silos. Consider any best practice, method or
standard that you have or are thinking of implementing. In any DevOps, ITSM, ISO or Lean initiative the
biggest challenge that any CIO or organization as a whole will have to address
is how to meet the rate of demand and the dynamic business requirements. Dynamic business requirements are a norm not
an exception and the service provider will need to ensure fluidity throughout
the value stream. Shattering Silo’s will
be a prerequisite to achieving end-to-end workflow and agility.
Functional Silos
When talking
about silos most practitioners immediately think of integrating departments or
functional teams. One of the more obvious
silos to address here is the division between development and operational teams
(DevOps). While there is a lot of buzz
in the industry on how to bridge that great divide, the real chasm that hinders
efficiency and optimization is that between the business and IT. Business performance is directly related to
IT performance and the business side of the house must engage IT in all
strategic initiatives. Not only to
ensure functional and nonfunctional requirements but I am speaking here of full
on consistent support and engagement with IT to ensure an ever evolving service
belt.
Technology Silos
Outdated,
disparate, and nonintegrated tools and technology are killing the opportunity
to achieve real competitive advantage, time to market and business outcomes. A holistic approach to tool selection to
support DevOps, ITSM and Lean will have to be looked at from and integrated
tool chain perspective. Enough already
with replicated tools effort and resources.
Process Silos
Ok… now we
are really getting to the crux of things. When attempting to bust out of and to
shatter silos. Those organizations that
have attempted it will be the first to tell us that we should never have a
“Configuration Management Process” project or “”
project. Instead you might have a
project to “Record and Track Changes” in order to restore service quickly and
reduce business and customer impact.
This initiative would like to look at how to integrate some small
increment of integration between Incident, Problem, Change and Configuration
Management. This is very different than
having an over worked bureaucratic configuration or change control process that
hinders more than it helps. Every process design or improvement initiative that
is driven by customer and business needs and requirements would work best to
deliver value. When projects are not
driven by the voice of the business or the voice of the customer we tend to end
up with process for process sake. Taking
an iterative agile approach to process design and looking at what might be
required for a holistic integrated process approach across the software
development and service lifecycle is likely to avoid a lot of bureaucracy,
bottlenecks and impediments in the velocity and cadence required to meet
dynamic business requirements. Agile
Service Management will truly help to shatter the “Process Silos”.
Information Silos
Functional
Silos, Technology Silos and Process Silos create data and information
silos. Simply put, if your data and
information are siloed, you will always be siloed and perhaps never have the
capability to achieve true optimized business performance.
To learn
more or to become a Certified Agile Process Owner or Certified Agile Service Manager: http://itsmacademy.com/Agile
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